A huge thank you to Jake Gillingwater for raising £3,120 in aid of the Head & Neck ward!
Words adequate enough to express the depth of our gratitude to Jake Gillingwater are hard to find.
On Saturday 15th June, Jake took part in what has to be one of the most extreme endurance tests on the planet!
Wishing to show a big thanks to the Head & Neck ward team at the hospital, Jake chose to raise funds for the ward by way of sponsorship for doing the 69-mile Ultramarathon known as The Wall.
Thanks to the amazing support for the cause, Jake has raised an incredible £3,120 for them!!
Sandra, the grandmother of Jake’s fiancée Chloe, has been on a very long journey, of which the Head & Neck ward have been, and continue to play, an integral part.
Following a total layrngectomy, Sandra spent 4 weeks in recovery on the ward.
“This was made as comfortable and supportive as possible by the staff on the Head and Neck Ward at Northampton General Hospital,” explains Jake.
“From the Doctors, Specialist Nurses, Speech and Language Therapists, Ward Nurses and all other ward staff, the care that Sandra received was second to none.
Words cannot describe the nursing care and amazingly positive attitude and impact that the staff have made on Sanrda’s recovery.
Even care down to helping patients remain positive and the reassurance given to both the patients and family members was beyond their ‘job remit’.”
We kept track of Jake on this mammoth marathon, which begins at Carlisle Castle, runs along Hadrian’s Wall and ends many many many many miles later at Newcastle’s Millennium Bridge.
69 miles sounds a lot when thinking about it on its own but when watching Jake move along the route on the map it really brought home the extreme nature of the distance.
He pretty much ran from one side of the country to the other, encountering tough terrain as he went, but completed The Wall in 16 hours 9 minutes and 36 seconds!!
How incredible is that!!
The days following the Ultramarathon was a very scary time for Jake, Chloe and their families as he ended up being admitted to hospital with Rhabdomyolysis and was even on dialysis for a while.
We’re so glad he has since made a full recovery and was well looked after while he was himself a patient.
We’d like to send Jake a HUGE HUGE thank you for putting himself through such a mighty challenge of endurance to fundraise for us.
You can see why it is so hard to find words that express this enough given what he has been through.
“We would like to raise as much money for this department as we possibly can to honour Sandra’s journey and her progress as well as the ward staff for making that progress a reality!” Jake added to his Virgin Money Page at the beginning.
He has certainly managed this with raising such a fantastic amount for Head & Neck.
A huge thank you to everyone for their support in sponsoring Jake, including a wonderful £1,000 donation from his employers, GKN Aerospace.
Jake came in recently with the lovely Sandra to present the amount he’s raised to ward staff.
They were thrilled and so grateful to be in receipt of this donation.
It was clear to see the beautifully close nature of the relationship Sandra and the family have with the ward staff.
A relationship developed with the above & beyond care and support from staff, which in turn led to this wonderful thank you back to them.
Thank you so much, Jake!
And thank you Head & Neck team for the incredible care you give to patients like Sandra.